


To kiss a boy in ten (or more) variations

by phrynne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kissing, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 14:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13572963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phrynne/pseuds/phrynne
Summary: This is the story of a kiss.





	1. As objective as it gets

**Author's Note:**

> “When you kiss me, the world grows so that the horizon itself disappears. Are we unsatisfied? Yes, if that means we are never finished.” Luce Irigaray
> 
> The characters belong to JKR , I just borrowed them for a while.

A boy leaves the castle at night. He walks fast in a straight line, towards the lake. He’s going to end his life.

Instants later, another boy exits the castle. He runs after the first boy.

They meet halfway. The first boy turns, the other one catches his arm. The first boy says something in a low voice. The other boy answers him, shouting. The first boy kisses the other.

The kiss goes on longer than the rest of the exchange.

The first boy doesn’t end his life.


	2. I – the first boy

I run from him, towards the lake. I think of drowning, of silence and stillness.

Of course he catches up on me.

His hand on my arm tells me more than all the fights we had. My mouth speaks on its own. He answers me, shouting. My mouth does it again. It kisses him without my saying so.

I think of drowning, of silence and stillness, inside his mouth.


	3. I – the second boy

I start after him. The night, the cold, the lake and him, walking fast and always alone.

My hand shoots for his arm. It’s now the only thing between him and the lake.

I don’t expect anything, definitely not what he says. It’s the truth, in a whisper. I’m shouting before I know it, a bunch of nonsense, not what he needs surely, but it’s out, burning my throat and I’m not even done when he kisses me.  

Words dissolve in his mouth. He tastes of need.


	4. Repetition

There’s the castle, and the night, and the way, and the lake, all silent and the same.

There are the boys. They’re not the same.

One speaks.

One shouts.

There’s the kiss.

It’s the same.


	5. Visual

The boy’s hair is so blond it’s white. He walks fast, dressed in dark, towards the lake, his grey eyes set on the surface like glass. A slice of a moon in the sky splits the surface in two uneven halves.

Another boy runs after him. This one has dark hair, a green jumper. They meet halfway, two silhouettes, standing apart, coming together. The blond, taller boy kisses the other. His hands are on the jumper, white against green.

The moon is colorless but for the trace of it on the lake.


	6. He

He runs to the lake intent on ending his life. It’s not something he’s given much thought to. It feels fitting.

He knows he’s being followed. He turns around, not at all surprised by the hand on his arm. His voice is a far away thing, he doesn’t know what he says but is aware it might be the truth this time.

The shout, the sudden contrast of that voice against the quiet, is what yanks him back to the living. There’s a motion in is his body, forward, more purposeful than the walk to the lake. All of it ends on open lips, for there’s no purpose when you finally get home.   
  
  
  


Years later, when he tells this story, he says it all started on the day he decided to die.

Truth is it started before.


	7. Heart

I run after him, heart banging on my wrist, chest, neck. It beats under my feet, on the trees, off the castle walls behind me and the whole world is a throbbing gigantic heart beating inside the cage of my teeth.

I grab his arm because I can’t think of what to say.

He whispers me the truth, I exhale my heart out. It beats once, a bloody vibrant thing pumping life and need. And then I’m shouting it all at him, what I should have told him a thousand times before in a thousand different ways. He kisses my heart in.

 

We share it between our mouths, biting, beating.


	8. The kiss

                **I**

 

I kiss you, two lips on two lips, two tongues and a dark openness, yours and mine. There’s the world, the space of your mouth. Two halves. My world fits there, around your tongue.

I stop dreaming of lakes.

 

  
               **II**

 

You kiss me, your mouth with all the things you kept from me until now. You are tender where your words were shards. I cup your face, clutching reality, to stop the spinning.

You kiss me like you don’t want to die anymore. 


	9. The Lake

The lake expects an offer of bones and breath. Instead it pays testimony to a kiss.

So do the trees, and the leaves, and the dust, and the stars, and the moon, and the night bugs.

The kiss is small, but the lake, and the trees, and the leaves, and the dust, and the stars, and the moon, and the night bugs know it’s anything but.

Every time the kiss ends, it begins anew.


	10. You decide what they say

You’d probably like to know what they said to each other.

Here’s what you know thus far:

The first boy spoke quietly, softly. He said something true. It’s the first time he’s ever done that. Maybe he did it because he’d decided to die.

               We always make a big deal out of first times.

               And of dying.

               He doesn’t care.

The other boy shouted something back, something boiling, something biting, something he’d kept there in his hands, in his chest, in his mouth and before it’s all out he’s being kissed by the first boy.

He never finishes what he was saying. He exchanges that for breath, and tongue.

 

              So it’s for you, reader, to speak their words.

              Wonderful freedom, don’t you think?

**Author's Note:**

> For my post-grad course in fiction I had to do this exercise of describing an event in different ways, styles and perspectives. This is what I came up with.


End file.
